


Hospitality

by Mikkeneko



Category: Marvel (Movies), Norse Mythology, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Community: norsekink, Dirty Talk, Gen, Innuendo, Torture, but as usual it's loki, by hurting them lots, this is how I show my affection for my favorite characters, well I guess that means I kinda like Thor too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 10:52:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Loki reappears after a three-month absence and invites his brother on a new adventure, Thor has no reason to suspect anything is amiss. Written for a prompt on Norsekink requesting a retelling of the lay of the giant Geirröd, from the Thorsdrapa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hospitality

**Author's Note:**

> This one is dedicated to my lovely Bottan, and her love for Norse myth, and all the help she gave me in researching (or not researching) said myths to write this.

  
Every now and then, Loki loses his mind.  
  
He sends it out winging over the mountains, tumbling through the swirling currents of air and the cool, wet wisps of cloud. Bright sun glares in the sky, flashing white and blinding off snow-capped peaks; the scent of snow and pine rises on the thermals to greet him, and Loki flies.  
  
No matter how far he flies, though, sooner or later he falls; tumbles towards the cruel stone teeth below and lands with a crashing jolt back _here_. And here, back in the choking, reeking darkness, Loki knows that he is not mad, no matter how much he wants to be; for if he were truly mad, he would not have to face this choice.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Light woke Thor, a glimmering flame that cut through the comforting shadows of night and called him to wakefulness.  
  
"Gnah," Thor croaked, fighting his way out of a strange and disturbing dream. In his dream he had been in a feasting-hall, but the chair he was sitting in kept rising and rising towards the stone ceiling overhead, forcing Thor to fend it off desperately with a pole to keep from being crushed. "Wha'?"  
  
"You never were a morning person, Brother," a familiar voice came out of the shadows. Thor sat up and squinted, casting blearily about for the source of the voice -- and light.  
  
One of the lamps set over his chest of drawers had been lit; it cast a dim golden light through the darkened chamber, casting dark soft shadows throughout the familiar space. Enough to see by, but not to see _much_  by.  
  
Loki sat on the floor with his back to the chest, the light spilling down on his head from above. He wore a long, voluminous cloak of some dark color hard to distinguish in this light, and had it drawn about him, hiding  most of him from sight. That was Loki all over, ever playing at games of concealment and trickery.  
  
"That would be because it is not yet morning," Thor muttered, rubbing his face with his hand and yawning widely. "Brother, what are you _doing_ here? We had not seen you for three months, and the first thing you do is come to interrupt my sleep?"  
  
"Has it really been three months?" Loki said, the tone of voice making the question not really a question. He sounded flat and quiet, as though he were talking to himself and not to Thor.  "How time does fly."  
  
"Yes, and what _have_ you been doing that kept you away for so long?" Thor wanted to know.  
  
"I was busy." Loki shifted position and pushed to his feet, pulling the cloak around in front of him. He took a few steps towards Thor until he was bending over him in the bed, the light silhouetting me from behind. "Did you miss me, Brother?"  
  
"No," Thor said, which was not quite truthful. He had missed Loki, at least a little bit, but Loki tended to scorn and laugh at him when he admitted to such sentimental things. "It was only a few months. You've been away for longer before."  
  
"Indeed, hardly any time at all." Loki tilted his head to the side, although the light behind him meant that Thor could not read his expressions. "And you never thought of coming after me, or following me, to see what I was up to?"  
  
"No!" Thor said, startled. Loki tended to guard his privacy very protectively, and had lain enough increasingly vicious boobytraps in his wake until people learned to cease prying into his affairs. "Why would I? And I couldn't have, anyway Loki; you went off in the form of a _bird,_  if you'll recall. What was I supposed to do, put on wings to follow you?"  
  
"Of course," Loki said flatly. "What about the others? Mother, Father? Did they think of me, while I was away? Did it ever occur to them to look for me, or to command Heimdall's gaze to seek me out?"  
  
"Not particularly," Thor said, confused by this line of questioning. What was Loki on about? He was a grown man, not Thor's baby brother any more, and if he wanted to go off and be by himself for a few months then he could; they'd both been gone from home for much longer periods of time before. Frigga had fretted, of course, because that's what mothers always do; Odin had wondered aloud a time or two what mischief Loki was conjuring, that kept him so long from home. But none of them had seen any particular reason to _worry._  
  
Thor grinned suddenly, seeing an opportunity to get back at Loki a bit for his relentless teasing. "Actually, Brother, I think that everyone was just enjoying the peace and quiet."  
  
Loki drew in a breath, and the sound was so tense and fraught that for a moment Thor blinked wildly, casting about for the source of what could have set him off so. Then, all in a moment, Loki's demeanor changed. He laughed, the sound as familiar to Thor as his own voice, and turned to sit on the edge of Thor's bed. The light spilled across his smiling face, the sharp-angled features and lean form.  
  
"Well," Loki said, and laughed again. "That was your loss, then. Because I have met the most amazing woman."  
  
"Oh, _have_  you?" Thor grinned, sitting up straighter in bed and running a hand through his hair. If Loki was in the mood to talk about his conquests, there was little chance of getting back to sleep tonight, but Thor found it easy enough to roll with the punches. It was good to have Loki back, to see his bright-eyed smile and hear his wicked laughter. Thor was willing to put up with a fair amount of exasperation in exchange for that. "She must have been quite a woman, Brother, to keep you so occupied for three months."  
  
"You have no idea," Loki sighed. His eyes rolled back in his head, and his expression went dreamy as he recited his tale. "On the wings of the bird I traveled over the mountains, and when I was weary I stopped to rest in a small mountain hold. There I beheld her for the first time, and she laid eyes also on me, and a spark was laid between us like a new-kindled hearthfire.  
  
"She had hair as red as a sunrise, Brother, and snapping green eyes to accompany them. At one moment she would be as shy as a sparrow in winter, the next fierce as a swan, the next coy and teasing as a minx --"  
  
"She sounds like quite the match for you, then, Loki," Thor interrupted, beginning to feel the first stirrings of envy.  
  
Loki flashed a small, sly smile, and Thor was sure he had seen Thor's envy and did not regret causing it in the least. "Her arms were white and radiant as the sun on the sea," he went on, "and when she opened her tunic before me, the tender skin beneath shone as luminous as a sunrise. With a knowing touch she slid beneath the blankets beside me, her hands and mouth clever upon me until I felt fit to burst.  
  
"Such wicked words she whispered in that thick heat, spaced by silvery giggles as fair as the lark's call in the morning. When at last she rolled beneath me, and parted her glowing thighs, there like a chalice --"  
  
"Enough, enough, Brother," Thor interrupted, hastily waving Loki to silence. His skin was beginning to grow very warm with Loki's words, and for all that they had lived some very awkward adolescent moments together, there were some things Thor did not particularly want to share with his brother. "How cruel it is of you, to describe so lovingly a banquet which has already been eaten to a starving man who has none."  
  
"Ah, but there is still another place set open at this banquet," Loki said, leaning forward conspiratorially. "You see, the lady has a sister."  
  
"A sister?" Thor choked out.  
  
Loki nodded. "Yes, a younger sister, though still a woman well-grown," he said, "tall and blond-haired as you prefer them, Thor, and with sky-bright eyes and a bosom threatening to spill out of her tunic with any sudden movement to the side. How many times over the course of my stay did she inveigle upon me to tell her tales of the mighty Thor, Prince Thor the dashing and handsome, and how often did her chest heave with sighs at the thwarted desire to meet you? How many nights did she sigh and moan, her arms and legs trembling with emptiness for lack of your body to fill it?"  
  
"She wanted to meet _me?"_ Thor said, astonished.  
  
"Oh, yes. They knew who I was, of course, and that you were my brother -- " Loki rolled his eyes. "And they would accept no substitutes, nor any deterrent to keep thoughts of you from their mind. The younger sister would not cease in her yearning for you, and soon the elder too was infected by the desire to swoon at once into your heated embrace.  
  
"Never underestimate the appetite of a lovelorn maiden, Thor. For months I resisted, I begged, I argued against the necessity of bringing their case to your ears. Surely, I thought, one prince would be enough to satisfy them? And by all the Norns I did try, brother, but I am only one man. Even I must sleep _some_  time.  And so in the end,I agreed to bring their case to you, Thor, and ask if you would be willing to come and meet them, and fulfill the most ardent desires of their... hearts."  
  
He drawled that last word with just enough of a leer on his face to deepen Thor's blush, and further tighten the heat drawn into his groin that Thor kept well-camouflaged by the concealing folds of his blankets. "I would --" Thor had to clear his throat before he could speak normally. "I would meet these fair maidens, of whom you speak," he managed to say, trying not to let his tone be _too_  obviously eager.  
  
That sly smile appeared again, and then vanished just as quickly. "Of course you would," Loki said.  
  
"But, of course, only the younger one," Thor hastily added. "I would not seek to part you from your most bountiful lady of the scarlet hair. She's yours, of course." Thor had learned many, many times over the years that attempting to take away from Loki anything that he regarded as his would end in furious screaming and quite probably bruises.  
  
"Oh, Thor, I could not care in the least," Loki said, rolling his eyes. "After three months of her delightful company, and that of her sister, I am most entirely worn out. Between them they have drained me to the dregs. It would be a most grateful _boon_  to me, Brother, if you could see your way fit to spell me in their passionate embraces."  
  
"I should be most glad to, then," Thor said. "When shall we go? Tomorrow night, or perhaps in the morning?"  
  
Loki stood up from the edge of the bed, and his cloak fell back down around him, a smooth sweeping line from shoulder to floor. "We can go tonight, if you wish," he said. "It's not that far."  
  
At another time Thor might have questioned the wisdom of jumping out of his bed in the middle of the night to run off and attend a booty call, but right now he was set afire with eager lust and too swept up in his brother's sensual talespinning to take time for caution. He rose from his bed and began pulling his clothes on; long tunic and trousers over his smallclothes, a belt to secure all in place and then a sleeveless jerkin over the top. He strode towards the stand in the corner to collect his armor, but Loki's hand on his sleeve stopped him.  
  
"Come now, Brother," Loki said with a laugh. "You don't need your armor, do you? You are going to a bedroom, not a battlefield."  
  
Thor frowned, and turned towards his brother. "I mislike leaving the palace without it," he said. "Tyr always said that armor must be as a warrior's second skin."  
  
Loki shook his head. "Trust me," he said, and then gave his brother a bright, saucy grin. "You would only find yourself climbing out of it as soon as you reached your destination, and do you really wish to waste time struggling in and out of that ungainly chainmail corslet? Leave the armor behind, Thor. You won't need it."  
  
"Very well," Thor said dubiously, and Loki released his arm and withdrew his hand back beneath the cloak. Thor was almost distracted, for a moment there seemed something odd about the gesture. Something about Loki's hands, previously so carefully hidden from sight under his cloak, that caught his attention.  
  
But then Loki was picking up the lantern he'd lit to waken Thor, and there seemed to be nothing wrong with the way he moved. "Let us depart," Loki said. "At this hour, there should be few on the walls that would challenge us, and I doubt they will have much to say once they learn of the noble purpose of our errand." He threw a smirk in Thor's direction, and moved towards the door.  
  
"Wait but a moment," Thor said, and strode quickly over the carpets to the stand that held Mjolnir, in her place of honor. A certain tension that he hadn't been aware of disappeared as he grasped the haft in his palm, and he moved to hang the weapon in one of the loops of his belt.  
  
When he looked up again, he met Loki's frown, his brows knotted and a stormy look in his eyes. "What are you bringing that for?" Loki asked. "You don't need a weapon."  
  
"Perhaps not," Thor said, and patted the hammer affectionately, "but I would feel bereft without her by my side, Brother. Besides, we might meet bandits or wild beasts on the way, or upon the return, and I would hate to meet battle without a sturdy weapon at hand."  
  
Loki sighed in great exasperation and rolled his eyes, as though Thor were the worst of all dunces in the land. "I told you, it's perfectly safe where we're going," he snapped. "You don't _need_  that blessed hammer. What would the lord of the hall think if you burst upon him, armed like a viking party and with a weapon in hand? It's terribly un-diplomatic of you, Thor. Leave the hammer here."  
  
"Nay," Thor said, a streak of stubbornness rising in him that could match even Loki's. "Whether to battle or court or courting, I will not go out without a weapon by my side to defend me. I would feel naked without Mjolnir."  
  
Loki snorted. "Isn't that the whole point of this exercise, Thor? Unless you planned to take your maidens to bed with armor on your back and a bloodied weapon in your hands, you're going to need to feel naked one way or the other before the night is out." He took a step forward, his eyes glinting in the low light like sharp jade. "Or perhaps do you have other plans for that hammer, Thor? Perhaps you fear that your own manhood won't be able to rise to the occasion of satisfying two such hungry, wanton women. They do say, sometimes, that the length of the spear is meant to compensate for the lightness of the sack. Perhaps you fear to leave Mjolnir behind because you hope to use your shaft as a substitute, to fuck your partners to completion when you yourself lie flaccid --"  
  
"I intend no such thing!" Thor cried, a scarlet flush rising to his cheeks as he clenched Mjolnir's handle in one hand. "Don't be disgusting!"  
  
Loki turned away, and the light swung away with him. "Then leave the hammer _here,_  Thor. Or don't come. I don't particularly care either way."  
  
For a moment Thor hesitated, torn and stricken. But Loki was already walking away, the shadows shifting and growing vast as he stepped with the lantern out into the hallway. He'd already made up his mind to accompany Loki, and... perhaps he should not be so stubborn. It was not as though they were going into battle, or even adventuring to an unknown realm where battle might be found. He was merely going to visit a household. Loki knew the way, and if there had been any dangers Loki would be well aware of them.  
  
He laid Mjolnir carefully back upon the stand, and hurried after Loki. His brother turned his head over his shoulder to see him, and flashed him a smile when he saw Thor empty-handed.  
  
They met no guards or servants on their way out of the palace, either due to the late night or Loki's careful planning of their route, or both. Once in the stable block Loki chose horses for them both, and left behind the lantern; although the night was still deep the thickly clustering stars over Asgard ensured it was never truly dark.  
  
Loki led them both out of the palace and through the streets, guiding them towards the mountains that overhung the great silver hall. He brought them at length to a tiny mountain path that wound its way up among the stones, up between dark black rock and the white folds of snow that never melted.  
  
After what seemed an eternity of endless climbing over the rocks, but in reality could not have been more than an hour or so, they crested the edge of a sharp ridge and saw a narrow but deep valley running between the peak of one mountain and the next. Familiar Asgard spread out behind them, reflecting a multicolored glow into the night sky, seeming almost close enough to reach out and touch the golden spires. Ahead of them in the distance, still small but perfectly visible, was the cluster of a tiny village and the dark mouth of a stone hold built into the mountainside.  
  
Thor was astonished. "I never knew this was here," he marveled, even as the horses picked their footing carefully along the trail.  
  
"It can't be seen from Asgard," Loki said, his voice toneless and distant as he stared up at the mountain hold. "Nor is it marked on any of the maps. I never knew it was here until I took to the skies as a bird, and began my exploration of the mountain peaks in the uncharted heart of the realm. The updrafts here are quite wild, you see, because of the way the sun reflects off the snow and heats the air as it rises; to soar upon them, riding from one buffet of wind to the next, was glorious..."  
  
He trailed off, and was silent for many minutes before he seemed to stir himself from some deep memory. "But in time, I grew too weary to continue my flight," he said. "And so, I espied this hidden fortress within the mountain's embrace, and came down to rest my tired wings upon the battlements. I could see the hall inside alight with the merry warmth of a fire, and the air was succulent with the scent of roasting meats; laughter and singing echoed through the stony vault. I thought -- I thought I could seek shelter here, for the night. I resumed the form of a man and stepped inside, and raised my eyes to the lord of this castle..."  
  
"And that was when you met the lord's daughters?" Thor prompted him.  
  
Loki blinked, and seemed to come back from a far distant place with a jolt. He looked over at Thor, his expression slightly lost and bewildered. "What?" he said.  
  
"You met the lord," Thor said, "and, from the way you spoke of them, I thought the fair sisters you described must have been his two daughters. You said they knew who you were, a prince of Asgard. Any country lord would be pleased, I would think, to have his children become the favorites of a lord of such nobility and stature?"  
  
Loki opened his mouth to speak, then apparently thought better of it -- or else could not find any words, since he closed it again and looked back towards the mountain hold. "It is as you say," he said at last, and lifted his horse's reins.  
  
He'd gone only a few paces down the track before he realized that Thor was not following; he turned to look at him, one eyebrow raised. "Thor?" he questioned.  
  
Thor shook his head, frowning. "You are acting passing strange tonight, Loki," he said. He did not miss the way Loki stiffened, his expression closing and his frame tightening with hurt and offense. He quickly added, "But I do not fear. You are my brother, after all, and I trust you." With a grin, Thor shook his own horse into motion.  
  
The two princes rode up the mountain trail towards the distant hold by the light of the stars. They crossed a swift-running mountain stream, their horses' hooves kicking up droplets that sparkled like diamonds in the faint light. The wind carried a keen bite, and a fresh scent of new-fallen snow and pines from somewhere further up the mountain. It was cold, but not unbearably so, and there was the prospect at the end of the ride of a cozy fire, and a warm bed occupied by a willing woman.  
  
For some reason Thor couldn't fathom, the closer they got to their destination the more tense and upset Loki became.  Now that the cold air had a chance to clear his head, Thor had to consider the possibility that Loki was playing an elaborate prank on him; he'd certainly known all the right buttons to push to get Thor to follow along behind him. Perhaps at the end of the ride he would face a cold duck in a lake, or a bed that contained not a beautiful maiden but a hideous mountain troll.  
  
Yet even if that were the case, Thor couldn't see what was upsetting his brother so; he ought to be more happy, not less, that his plans were going so well. Thor resolved to play along, at least for now; he'd come this far, after all, and no doubt all would reveal itself in time. Loki's pranks could be exasperating and humiliating, it was true, but they never left any lasting harm.  
  
At last they came to the foot of the citadel, and reined up their horses as Thor stared in frank awe at the edifice. A high arch had been carved out of the stone, with glyphs and runes inscribed in long flowing lines across the surface; frost and fine snow caught in the hollows, rendering the decorations in delicate white against the black rock. Huge, fine-wrought iron doors stood flung welcomingly open, and a draft of warm air and bright golden light rolled out from within.  
  
"I still can't believe this place was here for so long, and yet we never knew," Thor muttered incredulously. "It's amazing!"  
  
"The master of the hall does not go out of his way to seek out company," Loki said, as he swung over the side of his horse and slid to his feet. For a moment he just stood there, hanging onto the bridle with one hand as he stared up at the archway. "Nor is he particularly fond of Aesir."  
  
"Well, fond or not, he is still in Asgard and must bend his neck to the authority of the All-Father," Thor said cheerfully. "Besides, the laws of hospitality demand that he greet his guests with all due courtesy, provide warmth for the chill, wine for the thirst and food for the hungry."  
  
Loki came out of his preoccupation with a jolt, giving Thor an indecipherable glance as he fumbled around for his mount's reins. "Yes, of course," he muttered. "Hospitality."  
  
Thor glanced at his brother as he dismounted in turn, seeing him for the first time tonight in better light than that afforded by lamplight or starlight. Loki's face was strange and pale, and Thor realized with a jolt as he landed that Loki was wearing a glamour; the faint and familiar marks of his features were gone, the scar on his bottom lip, the twist of his left eyebrow. That realization only confused Thor further; for all his tricks and illusions, why would Loki feel the need to spend magic to disguise himself as himself?  
  
"Go on ahead, Thor," Loki said, and his voice was oddly muffled, subdued. "Make yourself known to your host. I'll take care of the horses."  
  
For one moment Thor hesitated; then Loki turned to face him, and a wicked smirk slid over his mouth as his eyebrows raised in disbelief. "Oh come now," he said. "The mighty Thor, afraid of meeting new people? Since when have you ever hesitated to stride into a new realm to conquer, and make it yours? Go on now; surely they are awaiting your glorious presence breathlessly. Especially..." He waggled his eyebrows outrageously. " -- the daughters."  
  
Thor snorted, but Loki's accusations of cowardice prickled. He took a deep breath and strode forward, shoulder square and head held high as he strode into the hall. "Hail and well met, master of the mountain hall!" his voice boomed out, ringing among the pillars and high vaults. "I am Thor, slayer of trolls, son of Odin All-Father. I have come to your household to seek refuge for the night!"  
  
His announcement was met only by an echoing silence; Thor's eyes were drawn upwards, to the vaulted ceiling so high it was lost in shadow. The roof was higher than he would have guessed from the archway outside, hollowed deep within the mountain; this whole _hall_  was much larger than it had first appeared, with the pillars as thick around as his waist, the hearth-fire glowed behind a grill large enough to roast a team of oxen. Even the chairs and tables were too high off the ground, tall and thick around as a full tree, and the archways that led off to halls deeper within the mountain loomed up more than twice Thor's height...  
  
"Here he is, as you bade me; unarmed and unarmored," Loki's voice came from the doorway behind him. His voice was shaking, and it took Thor a moment to realize that he was _afraid._  "And thus I have fulfilled my sworn word to you, and I am released from your power; you have no more hold on me, from now until the world ends!"  
  
Thor whirled around and started back towards the entrance, but it was too late; the heavy iron doors closed with a crash, and Thor hit them and bounced off. He shoved against the doors, but they did not yield; he pounded on them, but to no avail. "Loki!" he roared; the sound bounced around the chamber, but whether it penetrated the thick stone walls and iron doors to reach his brother's ears Thor could not guess. "What have you done?"  
  
"What I bid him," came a voice from behind him; a deep voice, full of rumblings and creakings like an ice floe beginning to break up over an angry sea. The voice sent a chill of fear down Thor's spine, unaccustomed as he was to it. He turned away from the door and pressed his back to it, suddenly acutely aware of his own underdressed, unarmed state.  
  
A shadow unfolded in the back of the hall, rising and rising as it came towards Thor. A _giant,_  Thor realized, the cues of the oversized hall and its furnishings snapping suddenly into place, and his hand itched madly for Mjolnir's haft. How could a giant have lived so long, so close to Asgard, without anyone knowing it? How had they not _realized?_ And how long -- how long had Loki been in league with their enemies? Three months he'd been gone -- surely it couldn't have happened so fast. It was impossible to think that Loki would turn against the Aesir, against his own _family,_  in a bare span of three months. It had to go back farther than that, and yet they'd never had a sign of it.  
  
"I am Geirröd, friend of Sudhri of the South, the master of storms," the giant rumbled, and as he walked forward the ground trembled. He loomed up before Thor as dark and massive as a thundercloud; his chest was bare, and his skin was dark gray mottled with light that shifted and swirled in the firelight. His hair and beard were wild, catching the light behind him in sudden bright arcs, and his eyes were like holes in the sky. "I know of _you,_  Thor Odinson, giant-slayer. Many of my kin have fallen beneath your hammer, Hrungnir's bane, that dwarven toy that seeks to ape the elemental fury of my kind." He laughed. "But not I, little Aesir prince; for tonight you will end."  
  
Geirröd reached over his back and heaved out a wooden handle vast as a tree-trunk, bound with tight iron bands and topped by an iron cap. A chain rattled and slithered down the length of the mace, and at the end of its length swung a cruel, barbed head of jutting metal spikes.  
  
"Is it revenge you seek, then?" Thor gritted from between his teeth, his eyes flickering right and left.  He edged sideways along the wall, angling towards the open space between the pillars. The giant had reach on him, with a vengeance -- each of the giant's arms was as big as Thor himself, even without the deadly range offered to him by that chain. It seemed a simple, crude enough weapon, with none of the craftsmanship of the dwarven weapons nor enchantments of the Aesir, but it needed none of those to crush him to a pulp. "Vengeace  for those slain by my hand?"  
  
A snarl crossed those huge, brutal features, and the giant spat into the grate over the heartfire, which sizzled and hissed. "Nay," he sneered. "What care I for the chittering, witless descendants of Ymir Frostborn's brood? I would have killed them myself had they dared cross my threshold, chopped their bones to keep my wine cool in the summertimes.  
  
"But _you,_  little prince-worm -- _you_  had the presumption to raise hand to those born of frost and storm. Aye, and you had the presumption to claim dominion over the power of the storm, and you were arrogant to think yourself its master. For that alone I would kill you, Thor Odinsson, and I shall take great joy in it." The giant grinned -- revealing a mouth full of disturbingly sharp and gleaming fangs -- and started forward, bringing the flail down from his shoulder towards Thor.  
  
He wasn't just big, he was _fast --_  even with all his reflexes Thor barely managed to dodge, to throw himself to the side and roll when that massive barbed head of iron landed where he had been standing but a moment before. He started to get to his feet, but the growing bullroar of the weapon's chain coming back at him made him drop flat to the floor again as it whistled deadly overhead.  
  
Thor feinted left, then rolled to the right, made his feet and bolted like a rabbit for the only cover available to him -- the huge stone posts spaced out among the hall. Even these massive pillars of rock might not be enough to stop the swing of that terrible weapon -- a blow with all the giant's force behind it might shatter it like brittle ice -- but he hoped that the giant would at least hesitate to break down the supports of his own hall, lest he bring the cavern roof down upon his own head.  
  
It galled him to run, to scurry like a rat from one cover to another when every instinct howled at him to turn and meet his enemy, to bring him to bear and chastise him with a mighty blow. But that would be suicide; he was hopelessly outmatched and he had wit enough to know it. On an open battlefield, encased in his mail and with Mjolnir to hand, he would have had every confidence in facing the mightiest of foes and emerging victorious. But here, trapped in this hall with the leviathan hunting him, without a weapon or even his armor to strengthen him, he had less chance than a cricket on a hot iron griddle.  
  
Thor was strong for his kind, which was strong indeed; he could wrestle any ten men of Asgard into submission in any given day, and still lift a cask or two in celebration afterwards. But he was still only a man, and without the enchanted, individually tailored armor that fit to him like a second skin and shielded him, buoyed and energized him -- he had only the strength of a man. Compared to the brutal, elemental strength of the giant before him, he might as well be as weak as a mortal.  
  
Geirröd came at him again, emerging from the hazy smoke of the hall at Thor's left and charging at him with a bellowing laugh. Once again Thor barely managed to dodge that wicked flail, but this time he was not quite quick enough; one of the long curving tips of the iron barbs pierced his leg, armored by no more than fine cloth, and ripped a great ugly gash down the side of his thigh.  
  
Thor snatched himself hurriedly out of the way and dodged behind a pillar, crouching down momentarily out of sight. His teeth clenched hard enough to crack as he pressed his hands to the wound, willing the flow of blood to settle and cease before the hot red tide bled away what strength remained to him.  
  
"You can duck and weave, but you cannot escape, little Aesir!" Geirröd called, his voice rolling around the stone hall and seeming to pick up strength and volume with every echo. "I have marked you; It is only a matter of time!"  
  
Bent double over the wound on his leg, Thor ripped a hurried, jagged swatch of linen from the edge of his jerkin to use as a makeshift bandage. It would mark his trail, now, wherever he tried to run or hide -- and it would be foolish to try, in the giant's own lair where he no doubt knew every rock and crevice. Storm giants were known to be violent and cruel even by the standards of their kind. Frost giants were equally monstrous but at least could be reasoned with, and had their own cold-hearted sense of honor; those born of the thunderheads had none.  
  
Yet what choice had he? Even without this new injury, he had no chance if he tried to match the giant's raw strength against his own. His mind raced desperately to come up with some other way, some strategem that would let him turn his enemy's strengths to weakness, and thus turn the tide of the battle in his favor. His tutors had tried to teach him such things, in the many years that he had studied warcraft, but he'd never really had the head for them. His own might had always served him well enough, rarely requiring any more subtlety than a rush into the battlefield and a bellowed war-cry to heat the blood, to drive the chaff of common warriors aside and draw the strongest opponents to meet Mjolnir's fury.  
  
He'd never been good at tricks and cunning and never thought he'd need to; for all that, he had Loki. Loki was ever the master of clever plans, subtle ruses to draw the enemy out of position or trick them into spending their strength at shadows. If Loki were here with him, no doubt he'd have come up with some clever plan to have the giant skewer himself on his own weapon before he'd turned around twice.  
  
 _Loki._  Thor ground his teeth together, blind fury momentarily driving out the panic and pain. His own brother had betrayed him, led him here and left him to die, and worst of all was the knowledge that he'd _let_  him. He'd seen the uneasiness in him, sensed the lies and deceit and had still walked along blithely and stuck his head in this noose like a lamb being led trustingly to the slaughter!  
  
Thor could not believe now that he'd ever been so blind; he knew his brother's reputation, knew all the names that the Nine Realms had branded him. Loki Lie-smith, Loki Trickskin, Loki the Sly, the untrustable. For years upon years Thor had ignored the warnings, let them slide and never sought to call his brother to task for his shiftiness. Only because he'd never thought that Loki would turn his wicked wiles on _him._    
  
"Loki, you coward, vile and accursed," Thor spat aloud, his hands flexing as though to close upon the trickster's wretched neck. "Should I leave this hall alive, I swear on Yggdrasil's crown that I will revenge this betrayal on your traitorous head!"  
  
 _But,_  an inner voice whispered, drowned and almost deafened by the fury pounding in his head. _I cannot. He would not. There must be some mistake. There must be. He is my brother..._  
  
He had no time to think further on his dilemma; Geirröd was stalking the hall again, the heavy flail sheathed for the moment in favor of a wicked metal blade. In his hand it was barely a pocket-knife, though long enough to serve as a sword for any Aesir; and the edge of it was jagged and serrated, wrought to hack and tear at toughened meat. "Come now, little prince, why do you lurk at the fringes like a stray cat away from a fire?" Geirröd chuckled. "I shall call for dinner, and carve for you of my finest dish: trespassing Aesir." He laughed at his own cruel wit.  
  
"I'd not share a table with the likes of you," Thor replied hotly, temper getting the better part of discretion. "You've made a poor host so far, storm giant."  
  
Geirröd turned sharply in the direction of his voice, whipped his arm back and threw; a huge chunk of stone whistled across the distance and smashed into the pillar behind which Thor sheltered. He ducked backwards, almost thrown from his feet by the reverberations of the shockwave when stone met stone. A chunk of the pillar tore off and crumbled as though bitten clear through, and Thor took advantage of the haze of dust and tiny pieces of shrapnel that clouded the air to run and leap to the safety of another pillar.  
  
"It is a grave insult you put upon me, to say so," Geirröd called out, his voice heavy with mockery. "Why, I am the finest host you will find anywhere in these mountains. Just ask your brother, and I am sure he will tell you."  
  
"I'm sure he would," Thor muttered sourly, but he wasn't quite quiet enough; the giant turned with terrifying accuracy and threw a missile at him again, this time a gigantic iron pot that rang like a bell as it crashed against the pillar and then smashed against the wall behind. Thor crouched down and shielded his head with his arms as razor-sharp splinters of stone flew everywhere.  
  
"You think I jest?" the giant roared. "Then look!"  
  
Thor looked up, barely in time to avoid being crushed behind when a solid iron chest came tumbling across the floor towards him. It missed him by a hairsbreadth and smashed against the wall behind, rebounding and springing open to lie on its side with its lid wildly canted.  
  
It was a large chest, iron-framed and inset with heavy wood panels with metal bands running around them for reinforcement. It was not too different from the clothes-chests Thor used to store in his chambers at home, save only a little larger. But that was not what gave Thor pause, seized him with a sudden foreboding. It was the smell that rolled out of the open casket towards him from the sullen blackness within, a palpable miasma of blood and sweat and terror and utter despair.  
  
"Never did fortune smile upon me so much as the day that a prince of Asgard alighted upon my threshold, putting himself within reach of my arms," Geirröd boasted. "Only the lesser prince, and not the one I sought; but I knew he could bring you to me, if he could be but persuaded. At first he refused to speak a single word -- he was quite wroth, and in an unseemly hurry to depart my company. And so I abjured him to stay, and laid hands on him when he sought to shift into another form and flee, and I did grant to him the full measure of my hospitality."  
  
"What is that thing?" Thor asked, his mouth suddenly dry.  
  
Geirröd let out a booming laugh, merriment etched on his features as he played up the game of the genial host to the hilt. "Why, it is your brother's chambers, of course!" he exclaimed. "His resting place for the three months past, which I so generously provided to him. A fitting accommodation for a lesser prince of Aesir, I thought, since you are after all so very small."  
  
The lid of the iron chest sagged open, yawning onto a dark pit. Thor felt drawn to it, transfixed despite the slowly growing horror. It seemed too small to hold a full-grown man, and yet Loki was slender, and could be unbelievably flexible at times. With his arms drawn to his chest and his legs bent double yes, he just about _would_  fit in so constricted a space.  
  
"What did you do to him?" Thor demanded, and what should have been a bellow of fury came out as little more than a strangled whisper. The foul reek that rose up from within was a mix of the worst of savage battlefields and midden heaps; sour sweat, stale urine, but above all Thor could smell the cloying stench of rotting blood. _Loki's blood._  
  
"I? I did nothing to him," Geirröd denied. "He did it all to himself, pounding and scratching in vain until his hands were all a bloody ruin. He raised such a racket, it left us all quite unable to sleep through the night -- a more inconsiderate guest I never have known.  
  
"For the first month after I put him in the crate he shouted and cursed and pounded his fists on the lid -- the noise fit to raise the dead from Helheim. For the second month he screamed and begged and long clawed scratches on the inside of the lid, a most unpleasant grating noise. For the third month, much to all our pleasure, he was at last silent.  
  
"And when at the end of the third month I pressed him to give his sworn oath to me, that he would grant my boon as ransom for his life -- he at last gave in. I opened the door and lifted him weak and stinking from the casket, limp and wretched as a dying weed. And he crawled on his hands like a beast upon my good floors, before the use of his legs returned to him. Then he swore to me, upon the sun and the stars and his name as an Aesir, that he would bring to me Thor Odinson, the so-called Thunderer, and yet without his armor or the mighty Mjiolnir, giants' bane."  
  
There was no conscious thought behind what Thor did next. A red mist had been rising over his sight all throughout the giant's boasting rant, as his words called inexorable visions to Thor's mind. Of Loki, trapped and choking in the dark, cramped and breathless and unable to move. Of his brother, pounding and scratching on the unmoving casket lid, as day followed night unchanging in the smothering darkness and no one, no one appeared to give him succor. Of Loki, starved and weak and broken on the floor at this monster's feet --  
  
The berserker rage snapped into him like water gushing over a broken dam, the scarlet heat of battle that drove him onward fearless of danger or pain or death. The wound in his leg seemed a trifle now, and it did not hinder him as Thor seized the closest weapon to hand -- a jagged chunk of rock, strewn on the floor from the shattered pillar -- and charged out at his enemy with a furious roar.  
  
Geirröd turned to face Thor as he emerged from the shadows with his arms raised. The giant reached across his back to the massive flail that had been slung there, but to Thor's battle-drenched senses he seemed to move slowly, so slowly. Thor gave a howl of triumph and leapt into the air, his focus narrowing down in exultant anticipation of another successful kill. With the memory of a thousand more like it fresh in his muscles, his arm bunched in preparation to bring the hammer down on the giant's skull --  
  
One giant arm, thick as a tree trunk, lashed out across his chest and batted Thor out of the air. With no solid ground to brace himself against Thor was helpless to counter the strike; he went flying sideways until he smashed into one of the hall's great stone pillars, the impact slamming the breath from his lungs in a strained wheeze. Pain flashed through his joints and his bones, and he thought he felt several of his ribs crack, although there was no time to stop and be sure. The jagged piece of rock jolted out of his hand and tumbled to the floor, useless.  
  
Geirrod's massive hand wrapped around his chest, and the giant lifted him into the air as though he were only a child. The giant was smiling, once again showing those disconcerting diamondine teeth. "I knew that would fetch you out of hiding," he growled, and shook Thor like a ragdoll.  
  
"But what's this?" the giant continued, and that note of cruel jovality was back in his voice. "You are shivering, son of Odin. Perhaps your cruel words about my failings as a host have some merit after all. For you have ridden far to be here, through the cold mountain air at night, and I have not yet offered you the warmth of my _fire."_  
  
He lifted Thor in the air and slammed his back against the metal grille covering the hearthfire, with enough force to rattle the metal bars in their housings. The maybe-cracked ribs were definitely broken, now, and he would have howled in pain had the unforgiving weight crushing into his chest allowed more than a wheezing gasp to escape. He smelled his hair and the linen clothes he wore burning, and felt the searing pain as the red-hot iron bars dug into his back and shoulders and legs.  
  
Geirröd leaned down towards Thor, a gloating sneer on his face as his weight boredown on Thor to crush him against the metal framework. "I must put my mind to proper accommodations for the Prince of Asgard," he growled. "You are larger than your spindly runt of a brother; I doubt you would fit in the same berth unless every bone were crushed.  
  
"Perhaps I will cut off your head, and mount it on a spike above my hearth; the rest of you should fit well enough. That cask I will send to your father in his silver-roofed hall, to prove that Geirrod, Master of Storms, had got the better of the so-called giant-slayer!"  
  
Black spots swam before Thor's eyes; he gasped for breath and writhed against the burning pain of the metal grate beneath him. Pain and breathlessness combined to make him dizzy and light-headed; Geirröd's face seemed to waver between being close and being very far away, and his voice droned and grated in Thor's ear. He felt an odd sense of deja vu; had it been only earlier that night -- that morning -- that he had dreamed of being crushed to death? Of the chair rising inexorably against the looming stone ceiling with nothing to fend it off except for a pole.  
  
A _pole --_  
  
Thor moved; he bucked in the giant's unforgiving grip and lashed out with his feet, kicking the giant's chest with a solid enough thump to make him momentarily loose his hold. Thor wasted no time twisting around to grope about behind him, wrapping his hand firmly around one of the iron poles of the fire-grate. The burning hot metal seared his palms, and now Thor _did_  bellow with the pain, but he did not let it stop him, he would not let anything stop him. He wrenched the iron pole against its mooring and with a crunch of rock it gave way, coming loose from its brethren and becoming a weapon in his hand.  
  
Geirröd had made a mistake; in his arrogance he had let Thor get too close, leaned in near to gloat at Thor's helplessness. The pain doubled from one hand to the next as Thor brought the pole around to grip it two-hand; and with all the strength in his mighty arms he brought it whistling down from overhead to smash into the giant's face. Geirröd roared in pain, dropping Thor against the grating as he reared up and stumbled backwards, clutching at the burned welts on his skin.  
  
Thor had no intention of letting his enemy escape. He reached out with one hand and grabbed a lock of the giant's coarse hair as it whipped by him, letting it carry him upwards through the air. His legs lashed out and found the giant's neck, locking around it with an unbreakable grip as he pulled the glowing hunk of iron back and slammed it point-first into Geirröd's eye.  
  
The noise that left the giant's lips was incredible, not just a scream but a rockslide, thunder loud enough to crack stones and bring down the sky. Thor's ears went numb and soundless after only a second; he blocked out the reverberating roar, the trembling of the stone hall around him and shaking of rubble, blocked out the pain in his hands and concentrated on nothing but driving the makeshift spear through his enemy's brain.  
  
Geirrod fell and the mountain shook as he hit the ground, nearly jarring Thor from his perch. His warrior's training warned him not to let up for an instant, not until the body grappling with his own was well and truly dead. The giant's body continued to twitch and jerk for minutes more afterwards, blood and less savory fluids flowing out hot and sticky around the point of the iron pole to flood over Thor's still-burning hands.  
  
Gradually the giant's body stilled, and Thor at last released his makeshift spear and slowly climbed to his feet. Now that the fight was over and the battle-lust began to lift from his eyes, Thor became aware of how much pain he was in; the wound in his leg still bled, draining warmth and strength from him. His ribs screamed with each movement, on fire with each breath, with a faint ticking gurgle in his lungs that warned him that aggravating the broken edges of the ribs would be a _very_  bad idea. Yet all of these pains were as nothing compared to the throbbing agony of his hands, burned black with bright red edges where he had gripped the red-hot metal.  
  
Thor was an experienced enough warrior to know how serious his wounds were, and more importantly, how serious they were not; as painful and inconvenient as they were, they were nothing that threatened his consciousness nor his life. He would survive, and he could move on his own power to leave this place and return to Asgard, where he could find healing.  
  
Before he did that, though...  
  
He looked around for a blade, and finally found Geirröd's cruelly barbed knife flung into a corner. Much to his annoyance it was not sharp, and the dull blade and the giant's leather-tough skin made heavy weather of the job. Finally he managed to sever the giant's head from his body and looked around for a suitable container to transport it in; no doubt it would continue to leak for hours, and Thor had no desire to ride back to Asgard with it dripping from his saddle.  
  
In the end all he could find was the ironbound casket that Geirröd had thrown at him during the fight; dented and scratched from the fall, with the lid twisted on its hinges but otherwise intact. Thor stood staring down into it for long moments, his brow twisted and his thoughts as black as the yawning shadows, before in the end he shook his head and tipped the giant's bloodied head into its dark interior.  
  
With that done, Thor turned and limped towards the great metal doors at the end of the hall.  
  
It was time to settle matters with Loki.  


* * *

  
  
This time, the iron doors ground open under Thor's hand. He did not know whether there was some sealing magic on them that had died with the master of the hall, or whether Loki had simply stopped holding them shut. With the bellowing racket that the giant had made in his death throes, Thor had halfway expected to find Loki fled.  
  
He hadn't.  
  
Loki sat on the edge of the long stone steps leading up to the entrance of the hall, his hands held loosely in his lap and his head bowed. The cloak he'd hidden under when leading Thor to this place had fallen to one side, puddled in a dark fall of cloth over the sharp edges of the stairs. The glamour he'd worn, too, had vanished, and for the first time Thor beheld the ravages that his months-long imprisonment had left on his body.  
  
Loki had always been slender but now he was gaunt, almost skeletal, with his skin drawn tight over his bones and the joints swollen.  His cheeks were sunken into pits, his lips cracked and chapped nearly to shreds for lack of water. He had always been paler than Thor, yet now his skin had a waxy, almost grayish cast to it that put Thor uneasily in mind of a corpse laid out on its pyre, awaiting the lit torches.  
  
Yet even the skull-like aspect of his face was not as terrible as the look in his eyes as he stared out into the darkness; haunted, wild, and utterly desolate. It was the look of a man who could not rest, yet stayed unmoving simply because there was no place in the world nor deed he could do that would bring joy or hope back to him again.  
  
Looking upon his brother, Thor felt himself filled with a rush of emotions that was equal parts pity and anger. He no longer thought Loki a traitor -- the giant's words had made it clear that Loki had not wished to cooperate, and the misery he'd endured was all too plain to see -- but he found he was still angry, very angry at what Loki had done. He'd not told Thor the truth, so that they could battle this foe together. He'd not helped him when Thor was running for his life in the giant's lair. He would not, it seemed, do anything but sit here and stare at nothing while Thor was murdered in the hall beyond.  
  
"Loki," Thor growled as he approached, his boots grating over the stone step as his injured leg dragged. Loki started up and whirled around, his eyes round and horrified, and he backed rapidly away until his feet caught on one of the stone steps and he stumbled.  
  
"Thor!" he exclaimed, then managed to summon up a shred of composure somewhere; he pasted a smile over his face, which looked more distressing than reassuring on his skull-like face. "Are you finished already? Is... is the giant..."  
  
"Dead," Thor told him bluntly.  
  
"Of course he is!" Loki exclaimed, with a hollow, breathless little laugh. "I never doubted you could kill him. You are Thor Odinson, after all, basher of trolls and slayer of giants. No giant could hope to stand against you --"  
  
"Enough," Thor grated, and took another step forward. "Save yourself the flattery, Brother. You lied to me, you tricked me -- "  
  
Loki's smile thinned at the edges, becoming panicky and desperate as he took another small step backwards. "Now -- now Thor, let's not be hasty about anything. I apologize for the deception, but I couldn't hope to kill Geirröd on my own -- I _needed_  you. I brought you here to kill him, it really is that simple. I was counting on you --"  
  
"Aye, you were counting on me," Thor said with heavy sarcasm -- he had learned _some_  things from Loki, after centuries of being his brother. "You were so confident in my inevitable victory, you brought me to this fight unarmored save for my night-clothes. I suppose you felt it was only fair to do so to give the villain a sporting chance."  
  
He lunged forward, and Loki raised his hands in feeble self-defense. The sight of them made Thor's own injuries throb with horrified sympathy; they were so bruised as to be black and bloated, the nails splintered and the fingers red ruins down to the first knuckle. He ignored his own stinging hands as he grabbed Loki by the shoulders and jerked him around to face Thor straight on.  
  
"Why?" he demanded hoarsely. "Why did you not tell me the truth? Gladly would I have recompensed that monster for the wrongs he did you, if you had only come to me. Father too -- he would never suffer such an assault on one of his warriors, let alone his own son. Nor would any man of Asgard let such an outrageous breach of hospitality stand. Any of us would have helped you, Loki, so _why_  did you choose this instead? This deception -- this _betrayal?_  Did you truly want to see me dead that badly, _brother?_ "  
  
Loki stared at him, his expression forlorn and hollow and desperate. "I swore an oath," he said in a thin, high voice. "I swore an oath to do as he willed, to -- to bring you to him.. I could not break it."  
  
Thor began an angry retort, then broke off midsentence. He'd never come out ahead in contests of words with his brother and he didn't think any good of it would come now, even when Loki was falling apart before his eyes.  
  
So he'd sworn an oath. Thor could understand that, he really could. The tales they'd been told as children warned of dire consequences to those who dared to break a sworn oath, of pains and plagues and curses that would rebound not only on the oathbreaker but on his whole family. Whether there was any strict magical truth to that, or whether it tended to be more of a self-fulfilling prophecy, didn't really matter. A known oathbreaker would be _nithing_ in Asgard, a nothing-man, reviled and shunned and stripped of his powers and standing. That the oath had been made under duress, and to a villainous giant no less, was of no consequence. As little as he liked the outcome Thor understood that once given, Loki could not take back the oath he'd made to Geirröd.  
  
But those same tales made it clear that the horrific consequences only applied to breaking the _letter_  of the oath -- half of them involve the hero getting around a rash vow by means of some carefully-overlooked detail. Loki knew the stories as well as Thor did; Loki had always been careful and crafty, detail-oriented and pedantic. Thor could not fathom why that would change _now._ If Thor could think of loopholes in Geirröd's commands -- to bring Thor unarmored as ordered, yes, but accompanied with a squad of half-a-dozen of Odin's best warriors? -- then surely Loki could think of ten more in the same minute. What could have gone so wrong in his brother that he hadn't even _tried_ to defy Geirröd's will?  
  
Thor stared into his brother's ravaged face, trying to understand. And as he did so, he found himself remembering something that the weaponsmaster Tyr had told him, many years before.  
  
Through the years Thor had had many teachers of weapons and warcraft, and yet it was always Tyr, grim and dour Tyr One-hand, who'd lost a limb to the poisoned fangs of the dire wolves centuries before Thor had been born, who taught them about the hardest lessons of war.  
  
On that day, he had begun to teach Thor of the various ways and means that he could use to resist and escape, should he be captured by the enemy. "As crown prince of Asgard," he'd said -- and coming from Tyr that never sounded like praise -- "There is somewhat less chance that you will be killed in battle, or executed if you are captured by the enemy. But there is also somewhat more chance that an enemy will strive to capture you. As a prince, it is your duty to your people and your kingdom to escape if you can, so that you cannot be held for ransom against your kingdom, nor bent to an enemy's will."  
  
"There is little enough chance of that," Thor scoffed. "I would never betray my father or my country. I would sooner die."  
  
"So says any man who has not yet been put to the test," Tyr replied. "We Aesir do not die easily, my prince. And many a prisoner soon finds that death is not a luxury easily come by."  
  
"I do not fear pain," Thor protested.  
  
"That is because you have never known it," Tyr said flatly. "Everyone breaks, my prince. Everyone. A wise commander knows this and plans for it in his calculations, rather than spending strength on recrimination or punishment. Your father understands the truth of this. Why do you think he keeps his councils so close, trusting his stratagems only to a careful few, and the whole of his plan to no one but himself?  
  
"It matters not how strong or stubborn or prideful or loyal you are. True warfare is not like in the tales, where mighty warriors speak lines of poetic defiance and rescue is always timely. If your captors are patient enough and cruel enough, if you cannot win your way free, if no rescue comes, you _will_  break."  
  
No one had come to rescue Loki. No one had even been looking for him. He might have died here, high in the sharp-fanged mountains among the cold biting winds, before anyone back at home had even realized he was in danger. For three months while Thor went about his daily life with barely a thought to his missing brother, Loki had starved and thirsted and beat his hands to bloody ruin against a door that would not open.  
  
And Loki -- Loki had broken.  
  
"Aye," he said aloud, loosening his hold on Loki's shoulders. "And we Aesir must keep our sworn word, must we not?"  
  
Loki looked hopeful; he took a quick breath to speak, his tongue darting out to moisten his ravaged lips. Before he could speak another word Thor's hand shot out to grab the back of his head, dragging him close in.  "I seem to recall an oath I swore myself, that if I escaped that hall alive I would revenge myself upon your head," he growled.  
  
"Tho -- Thor, what are you doing?" Loki gave a panicked yelp, struggling ineffectively to escape.  
  
"Keeping my word," Thor said severely, and raised his fist above his head. It pained him still, the black burns across his palms reminding him with every twitch of movement of the damage wrought by the iron bar; and that was why it was with a closed fist, not an open palm, that he brought his hand down gently and smote Loki softly on the side of the head.  
  
"There," he said, and released his brother, who staggered a step before regaining his balance, looking as confused and disoriented as though Thor had truly struck him. "And thus, my oath is fulfilled."  
  
He turned and limped away, leaving a confused Loki behind him. "Thor?" his brother asked warily, but Thor did not bother to answer him. Let Loki figure it out; wasn't he supposed to be the smart one?  
  
Thor stepped back inside the hall just long enough to take hold of the box where he'd stashed Geirröd's head -- he had no desire to linger in this accursed place any longer. It was not so heavy that Thor could not lift it even without his armor, but it was awkward -- almost as tall as he was himself, to start with, and his burned hands protested the rough iron surface.  
  
Getting it back down to Asgard was going to be a trial; he might choose to leave it here for now, and return better-equipped in the morning. Geirröd wasn't going to get any deader, after all. But there was something he wanted to do before then; he wished for his brother to see the proof of Thor's deed.  
  
He hadn't expected Loki's reaction to the sight of the casket; he flinched backwards until he hit a wall, and his face, already pale, went bone-white. He swallowed -- Thor could see the wasted lines of his throat moving -- and spoke in a voice that was barely above a whisper: "Please, Thor, no."  
  
Thor shot him an irritated look, uncomprehending as to the cause of Loki's sudden squeamishness. It was just a head, why all the fuss? "Come, brother," he said, and enforced his words by seizing Loki and dragging him forward with one hand while he pulled the lid free with the other. Loki would feel better upon seeing that his tormentor was truly dead; maybe then he would understand there was no reason to fear.  "Look you --"  
  
Loki's while body seized up under Thor's hands, doubling over as he twisted frantically to try to get free. A choked gasp escaped him and then he was bent over to the ground, retching upon the paving stones. Or at least, his body heaved and shuddered, but no more than a drop escaped him to fall and freeze onto the ground.  
  
"Loki, what has come over you?" Thor demanded.  It disturbed him to see Loki like this; while he was still a little bit angry with his brother, he was beginning to feel more frightened for Loki's sake than he ever had been _of_  Loki. Loki looked up at him, his face stark white and his eyes hollow, desolate.  
  
"I beg of you, Thor, if you ever thought yourself my brother," Loki said, his voice hoarse and ripped bleeding. "If you truly hate me so much, then kill me now and have done with it. Do not -- I cannot --"  
  
At last it dawned upon Thor what Loki so feared, and he was overcome by a mix of outrage and horror. Loki thought that Thor still sought to punish him, that he would force him back into the same casket that had been his torment. He felt at once paradoxically horrified by the depths of Loki's terror, and outraged that Loki would suspect _him_  of such a thing; did he think Thor was a monster like Geirröd?  
  
"Loki, no," he exclaimed, horror pushing out the indignation. Loki was clearly in a state of unreasoning terror, unable to discern anyone's true motivations; Thor hastily dropped the lid of the casket and moved to comfort him, grabbing his little brother and pulling him into his embrace. "That was not my intention, I -- I would not do such a thing -- not to you, not to anyone."  
  
Loki did not look at him, still rigid and trembling within the circle of his arms. His first attempt at reassurance having so spectacularly backfired, Thor cast around for something else, anything else to say or do. He had no skill for this, he was no word-smith; his strength was in his arms, but no convenient target presented itself for him to smite. He could swear an oath, perhaps, to shield Loki against all such foes in the future, yet what good would that do? He would have come to his brother's defense long before, had he but known.  "Loki," he said, a little desperately. "You must promise me something."  
  
His brother did not respond, but Thor continued anyway. "If you should ever find yourself in such dire straits again," Thor said, "trapped by an enemy you cannot defeat or escape, then do not spend your strength in futile resistance. Do not let them so pain you. Make whatever promises you must, agree to whatever deeds they wish -- and make haste to bring your tormentors to me, that I might defeat them."  
  
Loki shifted, and the trembling of his limbs and muscles stilled. "That's a very open-ended offer you make, Thor Troll-slayer," he said, and Thor could not decipher the flat tones of his voice. "What if such a foe is beyond your ability to defeat? This one gave you trouble enough."  
  
Thor charitably did not point out that Geirröd would not have posed half so much trouble to him if he'd had Mjolnir with him. "No foe is beyond my ability," he said firmly. "But bring them to me and I shall slay them, even if it be a very _army_ of giants."  
  
Loki snorted softly. "Are you not supposed to tell me that I should die before I let my honor be so tarnished?" he asked, his voice quiet and defeated.  
  
"Nay, Brother," Thor said bluntly, and it somewhat surprised him that it was true. "Because then you would be dead."  
  
He and Loki had both been brought up, of course, to believe that a warrior's honor transcended all other considerations, even unto death -- but he had never before stopped to consider what that really _meant._  Easy enough to entertain noble fantasies of self-sacrifice, of dying bravely on the battlefield after overcoming some temptation. Harder, much harder to imagine Loki gone from his side, from his life; to never see his smile again, never laugh at one of his jests, never hear his voice again -- in the face of that, honor seemed somehow like a poor second.  
  
He added, "And I will _never_  allow that to happen."  
  
Thor must have found the right thing to say at last, because Loki collapsed against him at last, his entire body wracked by long shudders. He buried his face in Thor's shoulder, and from the shake of his chest Thor thought perhaps he was weeping, but he felt no dampness of tears seeping into his shirt.  
  
But then, perhaps the last three months had left Loki with no water to spare for tears.  
  
"I didn't want him to kill you," Loki whispered to his ear, his whole body racked by shivering shudders. "I didn't. I didn't. I, I, when I came to your bedchamber I didn't, I didn't know what I would do. But then you said, you said, you didn't miss me at all. You hadn't even looked for me, you didn't even _care!_ You said, you said, you said you were _happy_ I was gone -- "  
  
Thor winced painfully at the reminder, the careless remark thrown into a horrible new light now that he understood the circumstances. If there was a worse thing he could have chosen to say just then, Thor couldn't think what; but how in Yggdrasil's name was he to have _known?_  
  
"I just wanted," Loki said; his voice cracked and he swallowed painfully. "I wanted you to know how it _felt._  To be helpless and alone and afraid and hurting. I wanted you to _know_. But I never wanted him to kill you, I swear -- I never wanted you to be _dead."_  
  
Thor swallowed what felt like a lump the size of Mjolnir in his throat, and told himself that the pain in his chest was only that of cracked ribs. It grieved him to hear that his brother had wished such harm upon him, no matter the reason; but what else was he to do? He would be ten times the monster Geirröd had been, to bring further punishment on Loki now. "I forgive you," he said huskily. "Loki. Brother. Take ease. You yet live, and so do I, and our enemies are defeated."  
  
After a long while Loki's shuddering ceased, and he drew a long breath that sounded like a drowning man coming to air. When he lifted his head his eyes were sane again, though his face was still hollow and ravaged. He blinked hard, his eyes drawing sharply into focus in the light spilling out of the hall, and his gaze fell on Thor's hands. "Your hands," Loki said, horrified. "What did you _do_  to yourself?"  
  
Thor turned his hands palm up between them, wincing as he flexed the joints and the skin cracked, bleeding a little. "An iron bar from the fire," he said. "It was the only weapon I had to hand."  
  
Loki shot him a look that, in any other time or place, would have been accompanied by a long exasperated sigh. _Really, Brother?_  he would say, his tone sounding bored and pained at once. _That was the best plan you could come up with?_  Now, for once, he forebore the lecture; he raised his own stiff hands to Thor's, and his face smoothed over with the blank concentration Thor had learned to associate with magic.  
  
Green sparks sputtered over his palms, at once cool-and-soothing and hot-and-stinging. Loki winced before Thor did, though, and dropped his hands. "I have not the strength left to make this right," he confessed in a small voice.  
  
Thor snorted, not unduly bothered by Loki's failure; his wounds were bravely got in battle, and he was not ashamed of them, painful though they might be. Healing them by magic always struck him as cheating somehow, and deprived anyone else of the chance to see and exclaim over their bravery.  
  
"If you did, I'd expect you to tend your own hurts first." He reached out and recaptured Loki's hand, turning the black and swollen flesh against his own. Loki looked at it blankly, as though he'd forgotten it was on the end of his wrist. "It matters not. Let us go where we can both find healing and rest."  
  
Their horses were still nearby, huddled in the lee of a rocky cliffside out of the night wind where Loki had apparently released them to wander. Thor went in pursuit of his mount, Loki tailing reluctantly behind. "And how will we explain matters to them, Brother?" Loki asked. "I'm afraid my invention is somewhat laggard, at the moment."  
  
"I shall think of something," Thor announced, as he pulled himself with no small amount of wincing into the saddle. Once there he paused a moment to catch his breath, and turn his mind over the problem at hand. Lies were not his forte; the closer to truth they could remain the better, although he had no intention of revealing Loki's shame.  
  
He brightened as a thought occurred to him. "How about this," he said. "You were captured by giants --"  
  
"Your creativity astounds me," Loki said.  
  
Thor refused to be distracted, even if the returning edge of Loki's droll humor was a welcome relief. " -- but you managed to sneak a message out to me," he said happily. "And I was in such an eager rush to rescue you, that I ran out of my chambers while forgetting to put on my armor or take Mjolnir."  
  
Loki shot him a disbelieving look. "That's it? That's the limits of your imagination?" he said. "Really, Brother, did you happen to hit your head in the fight with that giant? You actually expect people to believe that you went to do battle and _forgot_  your weapons and armor."  
  
"Well, I don't see you suggesting anything better," Thor said huffily. He'd rather liked his idea, foolish though it might have made him look to rush off to Loki's defense without even arming himself first; if only because he wished it _could_  have been so.  
  
The sky overhead was steadily brightening, the edge of the horizon incandescent with the coming dawn. The two princes made their way slowly down the side of the mountain to Asgard, with the sun painting the road before them.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Notes 1, Geirröd: So I normally like my villains to be at least a little more three-dimensional than this in terms of having motivations and depth and such, but in the myths, Geirröd is really just a straight up bag o' dicks. There's no real motive given for why he wants to kill Thor so bad -- he just does. In addition to the Loki incident -- which I did not exaggerate in any way, btw -- there was an earlier incident when Odin was wandering around disguised as a greybeard (as he does.) Geirröd was suspicious of him because he used seidh to calm his dogs, so he captured Odin and questioned him, and when he refused to answer chained him up between two fires for a week while starving him. So, uh, yeah, just generally a terrible host. Which leads us to our second point, which is...
> 
> Notes 2, Hospitality: Like with many other older societies before Holiday Inns were invented, hospitality was considered a BIG DEAL in Norse culture. The host had an obligation to his guests to provide warmth, shelter, food and drink, and guest and the host had a very strong obligation to not harm each other. Violating host-guest etiquette was a MAJOR faux pas, the sort of thing likely to get you skinned from the feet up or I don't know what they all did in those days. So Geirröd's behavior is doubly outrageous; not only did he do horrible things to Loki, he did them to a man who had come seeking hospitality. When Thor calls Geirröd a bad host here, he's not just practicing his command of the obvious; that's an insult on the level of calling Geirröd's mother a whore.
> 
> Notes 3, Oaths: Like hospitality but more so, oaths and the keeping of them were considered SRS BUSINESS in Norse myth. Half of the stories revolve around one party or another making an ill-advised oath and then having to jump through hoops to keep it. Even Loki, god of trolling and assholes though he frequently was, would not violate a sworn oath.
> 
> Notes 4, Armor: For this specific item, this is a little more based on myths than on the movies. In the myths, Thor's stupendous strength was dependent upon a magical iron girdle and gauntlets that allowed him to lift Mjolnir (ain't nothing in the myths about worthiness; that hammer is just really, really heavy.) In the Marvel movie versions (I have no idea about the comics,) it's not made clear how much of Thor's supernatural strength is inherent. However, I did notice that when Odin banished him, he explicitly said "I take from you your strength" while stripping Thor of the armor covering his arms, which seems to be not ordinary scale male but some sort of interesting enchanted/nanotech nifty stuff. And when he regains his power at the end of the movie he gets the armor back at the same time. So, at least for the purpose of this story I'm going with "without armor he's strong, but not THAT strong."


End file.
